‘Purple Haze’: the most groundbreaking guitar solos in rock and roll?
The world was caught off-guard when Jimi Hendrix emerged from the underground scene. In 1966, Chas Chandler, former bassist of The Animals and a newfound tastemaker, whisked Hendrix away to London after discovering him on the New York club circuit. With the formation of The Jimi Hendrix Experience and a solid backing band to complement his extraordinary talent, Hendrix was poised to revolutionise the music world. It wouldn’t be long before he did.
The stories of Hendrix’s arrival in London are manifold. A series of shows attended by the guitar-playing greats of the day, including at London Polytechnic in October 1966 and the Bag O’Nails the following month, confirmed to everyone that the future of rock had arrived. It wasn’t just that; everyone knew they had to step up despite their immense success in pushing the genre forward and critical roles in the ‘British Invasion’. Otherwise, they’d risk being left behind in the dingy dustbin of history.
The Bag O’Nails show was particularly momentous for music, with Hendrix’s friend Eric Clapton in attendance, as well as The Beatles songwriting duo John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Kevin Ayers, and all paid close attention to his approach. Years later, Ayers would reflect on the stunned reaction from the star-studded crowd: “All the stars were there, and I heard serious comments, you know ‘shit’, ‘Jesus’, ‘damn’ and other words worse than that.”
Hendrix had blown like a sizzling weather front across the Atlantic, and it was readily apparent that he was now the hottest ticket in town. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut single was a cover of the traditional standard ‘Hey Joe’. While not an original, it resoundingly displayed the American’s prowess on the guitar, with its chiming opening progression, his bluesy but gritty soloing and his incredibly dynamic nature.
However, it was the band’s March 1967 second single, ‘Purple Haze’, that confirmed just how innovative Hendrix was and his total force on the fretboard. Just as the psychedelic zeitgeist was taking shape and coalescing around some of the UK’s hottest groups, with The Beatles about to release Sgt. Pepper’s in May, Clapton’s supergroup Cream arriving with Disraeli Gears in November, and Syd Barrett’s singular entity Pink Floyd getting really narcotic on August’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Hendrix beat them all. He extended the foremost genre developments enacted at the start of the year by fellow Americans, The Doors and Jefferson Airplane.
Despite being at the forefront of the psychedelic explosion, sonically mirroring the countercultural spirit of hedonism and free love impressing itself on young folks, Hendrix cut a wildly different figure from the other genre pioneers on ‘Purple Haze’. When some were delving headfirst into playful LSD-evoking weirdness, such as the Boléro and Alice in Wonderland-inspired Jefferson Airplane staple ‘White Rabbit’, and with The Beatles and Pink Floyd also putting an experimental, madcap twist on the genre, Hendrix instilled real muscle into it with ‘Purple Haze’. Of course, this point is extended by the other cuts found on the American version of his group’s debut, Are You Experienced (the original UK release omitted the song).
While his friend Clapton was instilling blues-infused technical peacocking into the psychedelic genre with Cream, Hendrix went many steps further and created a sound incomparable to anything else despite the psychedelic nature. Combining the blues foundation with atmospheric Eastern-styled modalities, boasting the signature Hendrix chord—an E7♯9—and his generally imaginative approach to the six-string, his fingerwork and heady lyrics created a close rendering of getting high.
Does ‘Purple Haze’ have the most seminal guitar solos?
Typifying this historic nature are the two solos of ‘Purple Haze’. While they might not be the most seminal in rock history, which I would argue actually features on his 1968 cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’, they were undoubtedly the most significant of the momentous year the track was released. They clearly beat Clapton’s work on classics such as ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, another psychedelic highlight of the guitar.
The first is a winding, searing melody that tapped deep into the essence of the narcotic cerebral exploration occurring across the era, weaponising gritty distortion and spacey effects, making it perfect for people to lose themselves to. The second, which provides the track with its climax, significantly ramped up the expressionist tension. Hendrix’s high-pitched, repetitive and furious string-bending packaged the fury at the stuffy status quo the hippies were rebelling against. This final twist made the guitar more aggressive than ever. Forget Dave Davies angrily slicing a hole in his amp; this was a different beast entirely.
While certainly not his best ever, the two solos on ‘Purple Haze’ rank among Hendrix’s most seminal. They effectively opened the gates for all that followed in his career and the general development of rock music.
